DANNY'S OWN STORY BY DON MARQUIS TO MY ... - Pink Monkey

I never want to go ANYWHERES agin bad enough to
ride the rods.
Because sometimes you arrive where you are going
to partly smeared over the trucks and in no condition
fur to be made welcome to our city, as Doctor
Kirby would say. Sometimes you don't arrive.
Every oncet in a while you read a little piece in a
newspaper about a man being found alongside the
tracks, considerable cut up, or laying right acrost
them, mebby. He is held in the morgue a while and
no one knows who he is, and none of the train crew
knows they has run over a man, and the engineer
says they wasn't none on the track. More'n likely
that feller has been riding the rods, along about the
middle of the train. Mebby he let himself go to
sleep and jest rolled off. Mebby his piece of board
slipped and he fell when the train jolted. Or mebby
he jest natcherally made up his mind he rather let
loose and get squashed then get any more cinders
into his eyes. Riding the blind baggage or the
bumpers gives me all the excitement I wants, or all
the gambling chancet either; others can have the
rods fur all of me. And they IS some people ackshally
says they likes 'em best.
A good place, if it is winter time, is the feed rack
over a cattle car, fur the heat and steam from all
them steers in there will keep you warm. But don't
crawl in no lumber car that is only loaded about
half full, and short lengths and bundles of laths and
shingles in her; fur they is likely to get to shifting
and bumping. Baled hay is purty good sometimes.
Myself, not being like these bums that is too proud
to work, I have often helped the fireman shovel
coal and paid fur my ride that-a-way. But an
empty, fur gineral purposes, will do about as well as
anything.
This feller Looney Hogan that was with me was a
kind of a harmless critter, and he didn't know jest
where he was going, nor why. He was mostly
scared of things, and if you spoke to him quick he
shivered first and then grinned idiotic so you wouldn't